


Dressing Gown

by ljs



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 11:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12456864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: Diverging from canon before "The Lying Detective."(Inspired by a photoshoot of a distinguished man in, yes, a dressing gown.) Mycroft wears his dressing gown when he needs comfort -- until there's another alternative.





	Dressing Gown

Mycroft remembers the first dressing gown he purchased. He had been a still pudgy sixteen-year-old, about to start his first year at Magdalen, and terrified with it. He'd needed armour, he'd needed comfort. True, Oxford students had stopped wearing dressing gowns decades before, but he hadn't anticipated anyone seeing him in it in any case.

Sitting on the battered sofa in his room, studying all the weight of knowledge in everything from mathematics to history, he had been happily wrapped up in silk, warm in the coldest of winter days…. Until Sherlock, up with Mummy and Father for the day, had stolen it.

Mycroft had bought another one the next day, in a rich shade of green and a quilted shawl collar. It was a better dressing gown, more luxurious fabric, bigger pockets, and it draped well on his now slimmer frame. He had protected it from his younger brother's thievery for the next few years – for Sherlock had tried to claim it, make no mistake, due to Sherlock burning a hole in the stolen blue one during the course of an experiment with acids. Mycroft, wearying of the game, then had given Sherlock a replacement blue silk dressing gown for Christmas. It had not been received gratefully – because, after all, the recipient was Sherlock – but it had stopped the attempted depredations.

The evening of the first day Anthea worked for Mycroft, he had gone to his home rather than the Diogenes. He had shrugged off his suit jacket and waistcoat, and eased himself into his beloved dressing gown, and sat on his study sofa, gazing at the fire he'd made. He had thought about his new assistant's walk, and her hands as she arranged his files for him, and her laugh, quietly and discreetly amused, when he had made a snarling, sarcastic comment under his breath when the Home Secretary had said something particularly stupid during a speakerphone conversation. He had thought about her eyes and the flicker of an emotion he couldn't read well in the depths of them when he had said good night.

"She is going to be a problem," he had said to himself, arms crossed, rubbing his palms absently over his biceps, noting idly the softness against his skin and the susurration of silk. He had not spoken aloud what kind of problem, for the emotion she evoked in him was beyond his experience. 

He had not given in to that emotion in the next few years, but it had never gone away.

The evening of the day Anthea moved out of Mycroft's office to head her own section, he had gone home rather than to the Diogenes. He had shrugged off his suit jacket and waistcoat, and eased himself into his dressing gown, and sat on his study sofa. He had thought about Anthea's holding his hand too long when he had offered a simple handshake of congratulations. They had stood palm to palm, her smiling, him trying to understand the moment, until she had let him go. Those intelligent, lovely eyes of hers had held… disappointment, perhaps?

Then his personal mobile had rung. Sherlock, Eurus, family disaster – these were the only reasons his phone ever rang. He had been oddly reluctant to pick it up. But it had been Anthea on the line, her voice warmer than office discretion had prepared him for. She had asked him out for a drink, now that she was no longer his subordinate. He had accepted. And now, weeks later –

"I hope you don't mind my borrowing your dressing gown, darling," she says as she pads barefoot into the room. Her hair is damp, leaving tracks on the silk shoulders of the garment. Her skin gleams where the loosely draped neck reveals she is likely not wearing anything but the dressing gown in question.

"I don't mind at all," he says after a moment to regroup. She takes his breath away, as she has done for years. "You are welcome."

"My first night in your castle," she says.

"I hope it will be the first of a long line," he finds himself saying. He finds himself holding out his hand.

Taking it, so they are palm to palm, she allows him to pull her down onto the study sofa. She fits against him as if they have done this a hundred hundred times. He feels the silk of the dressing gown against his dress shirt as she presses in, as she offers her mouth. 

They had shagged, rough and hard, against the front door as soon as they'd arrived, the explosive finale to years of waiting. She had stripped him of his suit jacket and tie, he had stripped her of her work frock, and undergarments had somehow disappeared before he had plunged into her. She had moaned his name when she came, and he had called hers when he came. And then they'd started laughing, still entwined, breathless, as if more than sexual tension had been released.

He kisses her now, and it is soft and long and deep. It is comfort, it's armour against the horrors of the world outside. Then, wrapped in her silk-clad arms, he closes his eyes and lets himself fall.

He can always buy another dressing gown.


End file.
